Dynamic Post — Complete Help Guide
How to use the Dynamic Post plugin and what every setting does.
Dynamic Post automatically publishes professionally written Dynamic Content (dynamicontent.net) articles to your WordPress blog each month — tax, business, financial, and technology news written for accounting and professional-services firms. Beyond the monthly articles, it includes tools for internal SEO linking, local "Areas of Service" landing pages, an AI content writer, RSS importing, FAQ generation, and structured data for richer Google results.
This guide walks through getting started, then explains each of the plugin's seven settings tabs and every control on each tab.
1. Getting Started
Your API key (Free vs. Full)
Dynamic Post works on two levels:
- Free API — auto-loads on install. You get a rolling window of recent months of articles plus videos, and the core blog tools. Several advanced features are visible but locked, with an Upgrade link.
- Full API — entered after you subscribe. Unlocks the complete historical archive, auto-posting from your subscription start date, RSS feeds, the AI Content Writer, all image/SEO options, and higher FAQ-automation limits.
The plugin validates your key automatically. If you have a Full key, paste it into the API key field and save; the plugin re-checks it and unlocks the matching features. Your plan also determines per-feature limits (categories, RSS feeds, Linkmaster keywords, Areas-of-Service cities, AI credits, FAQ automations). Anywhere a feature isn't included in your current plan, the plugin grays it out and shows an Upgrade link — so the interface itself always reflects what you can use right now.
Accept the Terms of Service
Before the plugin posts anything, tick Terms of Service on the Blog Settings tab. This is a one-way acceptance — once accepted it stays accepted and cannot be un-ticked.
First articles on the page
Importing happens on the Category Posting Settings tab (click Post Articles), not automatically the instant you install. If a shortcode or category shows nothing, that almost always means you haven't imported that category yet — see Section 3.
2. The Seven Tabs at a Glance
| Tab | What it's for |
|---|
| Blog Settings | Global on/off switches: posting, metadata, canonical, images, Custom CSS, structured data, RSS feeds, disclaimer |
| Category Posting Settings | Choose categories and import articles; see version + read-count columns |
| Linkmaster (SEO) | Automatic internal links from keywords to your chosen URLs |
| Areas of Service (SEO) | Generate local "[service] in [city]" landing pages |
| How to use shortcode | Reference for placing articles/FAQs anywhere with shortcodes |
| AI Content Writer (SEO) | Generate original articles with Grok AI |
| DP Health | FAQ Magic | Health checks + one-click FAQ generation |
3. Blog Settings
Global switches that affect how Dynamic Content articles behave site-wide.
Terms of Service
Accept once to enable posting. One-way latch (cannot be un-accepted).
Auto Posting Blogs every month
When on, the plugin automatically pulls the new month's articles for your selected categories at the start of each month — no manual click needed. When off, you import manually with Post Articles. The page shows "Auto Posting is Turned On / Off" so the current state is always clear.
Show/Hide Meta Data
Controls whether the article byline/meta block (author, date, source line) is displayed on Dynamic Content articles.
Canonical Option
Sets the canonical URL tag on Dynamic Content articles:
- On → WordPress canonical (the canonical points to the copy on your site).
- Off → Dynamicontent.net canonical (the canonical points back to the original source).
Use the WordPress option if you want your own pages to be the canonical version for search engines.
Image controls (three switches that work together)
Dynamic Content articles can show their image in different places depending on three switches. The in-plugin labels are:
- Image Content — Nested Right (the in-body content image)
- Featured2 — Used for Thumbnails — exposes a secondary thumbnail image, also used for category/archive listings; exact placement depends on your theme.
- Featured — Top Center / Thumbnail / Accent — sets a real WordPress Featured Image, which your theme can use for blog cards, a top-center header, or an accent image.
How the combinations render on a single article page (with the thumbnail switch on):
| In-body Content Image | Thumbnail | Featured Image | Result on the single article page |
|---|
| Off | On | Off | No image on the article page |
| On | On | Off | Image shown nested, right-aligned in the body |
| Off | On | On | Image shown top-center |
| On | On | On | Image shown twice — top-center and nested right-aligned |
Because exact placement of the thumbnail/featured image is ultimately controlled by your theme, test the look on your own site and pick the combination you prefer.
Custom CSS
A free-form box for your own CSS rules that style the article output (fonts, spacing, colors, image borders, etc.). Leave blank to use your theme's defaults.
Structured data (JSON-LD)
Toggles the plugin's structured-data output (Article / FAQ / LocalBusiness / Breadcrumb schema) that helps Google understand your content and can earn richer search results. The plugin defers to your SEO plugin — if Yoast, Rank Math, or All in One SEO is active and already emits a given schema type, Dynamic Post won't duplicate it. If this toggle is off, FAQs and pages still display normally; only the machine-readable schema is withheld.
RSS Feeds
Add up to 5 external RSS/Atom feed URLs (for example, a wealth or markets feed from a major outlet). For each feed you set:
- Weekly or Monthly frequency, and
- a limit of 1–10 articles to import per run.
The plugin pulls current-month items only. Feed images hot-link to the original by default (they're not copied into your Media Library), or you can choose to save them locally per feed; if a source blocks hot-linking, the image placeholder simply won't show. Feeds are validated when you save (you'll see a confirmation or the reason it was rejected, and the previous valid value is kept on failure). RSS feeds can be mapped only to your own categories — Dynamic Content categories are excluded so RSS items never collide with or duplicate the monthly articles.
Redirect
The redirect itself is issued by PHP at runtime, not by the web server. The flow is:
- A visitor/bot hits a removed article's URL.
- WordPress can't find the post → it's heading toward a 404.
- On the
template_redirect hook, dp_301_redirect() runs, sees is_404(), looks up the request path in dp_301_map, and if it matches, calls wp_safe_redirect($target, 301); exit; — a real HTTP 301 sent by PHP.
Disclaimer
The official Dynamic Content disclaimer is appended automatically to every Dynamic Content article. It is not added to manual posts, Grok-generated articles, or RSS-imported posts.
Reader features on articles
Dynamic Content articles also include a reading-time badge, a Print button (clean printer-friendly version with your logo, title, date, and disclaimer), and — on Full API — Ask Grok One Question, which lets a reader ask one question about the article topic and get a short AI answer (rate-limited to 3 per visitor per day and 50 per site per month).
4. Category Posting Settings
Choose which Dynamic Content categories to publish, import them, and monitor each one.
The two import buttons
- Post Articles — pulls the current month for the categories you've selected. Works on both Free and Full.
- Post From Start Date — Full API only. Pulls every month from your subscription start date forward, filling in your complete archive. It skips any article you've moved to trash and replaces older article versions when a newer version exists. Large archives can take 1–2 minutes.
Your category selections are remembered for next month's automatic run and the next time you open the plugin.
The columns
For each category, you'll see:
- Start Date — when the category first became available on your subscription.
- Reads Now — page views this month (search bots + humans). Resets on the 1st.
- Reads All — lifetime views since the category's start date.
- Post Version — the current article version number on the API. If it instead shows "Available" in red, a newer version exists in the API for the current month — a cue to re-run Post Articles to pull the update.
Read counts and version columns update only when you click Post Articles / Post From Start Date or when the monthly auto-run completes — not on every page load.
Version updates (current month only)
During the first month an article is live, the plugin checks the API version each run; if the version has changed, it deletes the old copy and pulls the new one. After the first month, it stops checking that article — this keeps API calls low and your archive stable.
Trash behavior (important)
Articles you move to the WordPress trash are not re-pulled by Post Articles or Post From Start Date — trashing is treated as "I don't want this one." To bring an article back, permanently delete it from trash first, then re-run Post Articles. Manual posts and any categories outside Dynamic Content are never touched by the plugin.
ADA / formatting refresh
The plugin adds image alt text and semantic markup automatically. For older archives that pre-date current formatting, delete those articles and re-run Post From Start Date (Full API) so every article gets the current ADA-friendly markup (alt text, semantic wrappers, reading-time badge, print button).
5. Linkmaster (SEO)
Automatic internal linking. Add a keyword or phrase and the URL it should point to; Linkmaster then turns matching words in your articles into links automatically — a low-effort way to build internal link structure and guide readers to your service pages. The number of keyword rules you can add depends on your plan.
6. Areas of Service (SEO)
Bulk-generate local landing pages — one "[service] in [city]" page per keyword × city — to capture long-tail local search.
Key options:
- Page structure — Nested (
/areas-of-service/{city}/{keyword-city}/) or Flat. In flat mode, the city-level layer is removed and the relevant fields gray out. - Source Page — the existing service page whose content seeds each generated page; that page's URL becomes the canonical origin.
- Canonical link strategy:
- Canonical to source (default, conservative) — generated pages point their canonical at the source page, consolidating ranking signal there.
- Self-canonical (aggressive) — each page is its own canonical and competes on its own.
- Noindex — self-canonical plus
noindex, follow, so the pages never appear in organic search (use for ad landing pages or internal navigation only).
- Adopt — bring existing hand-built Areas-of-Service pages under the plugin's management without changing their content; adopted pages are protected from the plugin's delete routine.
Quality caution: Google demotes near-duplicate "doorway" pages. The plugin handles structure and canonicals, but you should add at least a paragraph of genuinely city-specific content per page (a local landmark, the office address, a testimonial) so each page offers real value. Pair this with the Review & Lock feature (Section 11) for pages you've edited.
The number of cities and keywords-per-city you can generate depends on your plan.
7. How to Use Shortcodes
Shortcodes let you place articles, videos, or an FAQ anywhere on your site. The article shortcodes pull from posts the plugin has already imported — they don't call the API when the page loads, so they're fast.
1. Current month — [dynamic-post]
[dynamic-post cat="tax"] [dynamic-post cat="Tax and Financial News"]
2. Archive (specific month + year) — [dynamic-posts]
[dynamic-posts cat="tax" month="jan" year="2024"]
month accepts a 3-letter abbreviation ( jan, feb, …) or a number 1–12. Asking for a month before your subscription start date shows "change the month and year" rather than empty output. (On Full API, a requested past article not yet in WordPress is fetched from the API and saved for faster future loads.)
3. Video listing — [dynamic-post_videos]
[dynamic-post_videos cat="tax" limit="20"]
4. FAQ builder — [dc_faq]
Turns a list of questions and answers into an accessible expand/collapse FAQ and matching FAQPage structured data (which can earn expandable FAQ results in Google). Put one Q: line followed by one A: line per question (answers may span multiple lines) between the tags:
[dc_faq]
Q: What is a 1099 form?
A: A 1099 reports income you received from sources other than an employer...
Q: When is it due?
A: Most 1099s must be furnished to recipients by January 31.
[/dc_faq]
Manual is unlimited on every plan. If you'd rather have the plugin build an FAQ for you from an existing article, use FAQ Magic (Section 10) — that one-click automation is tiered by plan.
Category names and aliases
Either the short alias or the full display name works in any cat="":
| Alias | Category |
|---|
tax | Tax and Financial News |
bus | General Business News |
stock | Stock Market News |
fin | Financial Planning |
tip | Tip of the Month |
tech | What's New in Technology |
guest | Guest Post of the Month |
guesta | Guest Article of the Month |
guestw | Guest Writer of the Month |
lib | Life Events Library |
cong | Congress at Work |
advert | Advertisement |
acct | Accounting News |
yetp | Year End Tax Planning |
Month abbreviations
jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec (or numbers 1–12).
Empty results? Go to Category Posting Settings and click Post Articles first — that imports the current month so the shortcode has something to show.
8. AI Content Writer (SEO) — Grok
Generate original articles with the Grok AI writer for topics outside the standard Dynamic Content categories. Generated articles are yours to edit; they do not receive the Dynamic Content disclaimer (they aren't Dynamic Content articles). Usage is metered by AI credits, and the monthly/lifetime credit allowance depends on your plan (some sites are whitelisted for unlimited use). The [grok_ai] Shortcode is also available.
9. DP Health
A diagnostics tab. It scans your published Dynamic Content articles on demand (kept on-demand so the page stays fast on large libraries) and reports coverage gaps such as missing featured images, missing alt text on content images, and missing meta descriptions, with lists of the affected articles so you can fix them. It also surfaces operational status, such as each RSS feed's last successful pull and error count.
10. FAQ Magic (on the DP Health tab)
FAQ Magic finds articles that would benefit from an FAQ and builds one for you.
- Scan for FAQ Opportunities — free on every plan. Lists published Dynamic Content articles that read like an FAQ (a definitional title, an "FAQ" heading, or question-style sections). It changes nothing.
- Preview FAQ — auto-builds a ready-to-edit
[dc_faq] Block from the article's own headings and intro, so you can review it before anything is saved. - Insert into article — appends the FAQ block to the article in one click.
Tiered automation: the one-click tool is limited per plan — Free 1, Starter 5, Pro 10, Premium 20, Enterprise unlimited. Once you reach your plan's limit, the remaining Preview buttons gray out with an Upgrade link, and the top of the scan results shows your detected plan and how many you have left. Writing [dc_faq] by hand is always unlimited on every plan — only the automatic generation is metered.
11. Review & Lock (in the post editor)
On any article's edit screen, you'll find a Lock & Review box with two independent switches:
- Lock — protects the article from being overwritten by the monthly version engine and from the Free plan's automatic cleanup. Use this for any article you've hand-edited (for example, an Areas-of-Service page you added local content to) so your edits aren't replaced. Locking shows no public badge — it's purely protection.
- Reviewed & approved by me — publicly marks the article as reviewed by a credentialed person. It adds a front-end "reviewed and approved by [Name, credential, title]" emblem and matching review schema (
reviewedBy / lastReviewed), which supports Google's E-E-A-T trust signals. You'll be asked to confirm before your name is publicly attributed.
To use the reviewer attribution, an administrator designates a WordPress user as a reviewer (with a professional Title and Designation, e.g. CPA) on that user's profile screen. Only real, credentialed reviewers should be attributed — fabricated review signals are a search-ranking and trust risk.
12. Troubleshooting
- A category or shortcode shows nothing → open Category Posting Settings and click Post Articles to import the current month.
- "change the month and year" → you've requested a month before your subscription start date; pick a later month/year.
- "Post Version" shows "Available" in red → a newer article version exists; re-run Post Articles to pull it.
- A trashed article won't come back → permanently delete it from trash, then re-run Post Articles (trashed items are intentionally not re-pulled).
- RSS image is missing → the source likely blocks hot-linking; either accept the missing image or set that feed to save images locally.
- A feature is grayed out → it isn't included in your current plan; use the Upgrade link shown beside it.
- The API is unreachable → the plugin is built to fail safely: it will not crash your site or loop, and it resumes automatically when the API is back. Your existing posts are unaffected.